


Donec Amentia

by Odile (Odileheroin_e)



Series: Unfinished Works - not finished and probably never will be [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Grief, Insanity, Mental Instability, The Cruciatus Curse, Torture, Voldy’s cruel punishment games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 14:35:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4610400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odileheroin_e/pseuds/Odile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unfinished Works #1: Draco is tortured until insanity in front of his parents as a punishment for his failure to kill Dumbledore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Donec Amentia

**Author's Note:**

> (can I just say I'm sorry for my pretentious Latin titles)
> 
> The idea was to fill my own prompt for the deserted potter kink:  
> "Narcissa and Lucius have to torture Draco until insanity as a punishment for his failure to kill Dumbledore. The proud but perhaps surprisingly loving parents refuse shutting their son in St. Mungo's, but prefer to keep Draco in the Malfoy Manor to look after him personally. Harry shows up with friends after the war or at the end of it, just for the reader to get the kicks out of the revelation." 
> 
> Well, I never got further than this, the idea has more or less died on me, but I'd like to present it to you anyhow. (And, who knows, enough kudos, bookmarks and especially comments... anything could happen.) Another idea I had was for a follow-up fic, in which Harry could not get Moaning Myrtle and Draco just before Sectumsempra out of his head, knowing how Draco had ended up.

“…disappointed, Draco.”

 

_Disappointed. Disappointed._

The Dark Lord’s voice rang in Draco’s ears, that death sentence of a word repeated on an endless, manic loop until he felt the Ds and the Ps bubbling up to his own lips. Nobody wants the Dark Lord to be disappointed.

 

The dungeon air felt still and stuffy, each person in the normally chilly room raising the room temperature a little and eating away at the oxygen inside. Draco stood rigidly in the middle of the room, eyes nailed down to the stone floor, the tiny movements of his lips barely disguised by his ragged, heavy, scared breathing. He felt the eyes on him; Voldemort’s red slits bleeding languorous malice and that _disappointment_ on him, the eyes of the Death Eaters, watching in cold, passive silence – the eyes of his revered, beloved parents, waiting, terror-stuffed and tense… Draco felt like even the air itself was closing in on him and yet escaping him, depriving him of all comfort of company and stifling him in judgemental silence.

 

“Tell me, Draco…”

A soundless flutter wafted a pitch-black robe in Draco’s field of vision.

“Why?”

Draco gritted his teeth impossibly hard to stop his half-voluntary mumbling.

“Was it because you felt pity… for his rotten, old bones? Or, was it because you are not truly loyal to your master?”

“ _No_ ”, Draco gasped aloud in an unintelligible sob. His thoughts began to race and blur together in a desperate fervour to show that he was a good boy, that he’d do anything and everything, just please don’t…

“Or…”

Voldemort’s voice was a drop of disease-darkened blood in water, falling straight through the skin-soft surface and spreading noiselessly in Draco’s head, polluting every thought and all hope he had.

“…was it because you could not do it?”

He closed his eyes, lifted his head towards the only chandelier in the room and willed his mind to go blank; Voldemort’s voice pressed through his Occlumency, not muffled but magnified in the silence of his mind:

“Were you too weak-willed?”

Draco winced in fear of the build of disgust in the Dark Lord’s voice.

“Were you, _Draco Malfoy_ , a deplorable excuse of a pure wizard, _too weak_ to kill for your master?”

He felt the burning red eyes on him for a moment longer, and Voldemort turned away, apparently not truly expecting an answer. The booming, revolted voice softened to thick, velvety red again as it turned to address Draco’s parents.

“Lucius and Narcissa, you have both disappointed me with your _spawn_. You subject your loyalty to suspicion and you tarnish the ancient name of your family with weakness and cowardice.”

Draco opened his eyes a little and almost involuntarily felt himself relax; the candlelight from above was soft and comforting, in some strange, desolate way. Though he still willed away all thoughts, a stream of ideas from somewhere below the surface broke through: He wasn’t talking to him, He was not including him, something was going to happen – perhaps He would let _them_ go, perhaps He offered _them_ a chance –

“I don’t require weak wizards. Weakness in a Death Eater is a cardinal sin and it can only be purged with pain.”

_‘Don’t require’. ‘Pain’._

Words whirled and echoed in Draco’s empty head. His Occlumency was breaking; forcing despair out of his mind made his whole body shake violently.

The air seemed to get from stuffy to coagulated, dense with the atmosphere of the irreversible. An expectant silence ensued, soon to be filled by Lucius Malfoy:

“What shall You require of us, my Master?” His voice was heavy with grief, masked under the even heavier cloak of duty and loyalty.

“You will stay here. And watch as Draco’s dear aunt Bella burns him until the pain brands him.”

As no response other than open mouths, forming tears and swallows could be elicited, he elaborated:

“Until his sanity leaves him.”

Narcissa breathed a desperately long draught of air and let her cheeks wet with salt. Lucius cast his eyes down and whispered a forlorn plea barely audible through the sudden rasp in his voice:

“…master…”

“That will do, Lucius”, Voldemort answered , rejecting his prayer in a voice as cold as a Dementor’s breath. The Dark Lord’s verdict was final. “I don’t require much; I could have had you do it instead. Accept your punishment or be prepared for more of it. Bella, if you please.”

Draco’s fear was overwhelming him, invading his mind and destroying the walls the Occlumency had blessed him with. He jerked away from the self-induced paralysis to throw a wild look at his parents, letting a sob tear through his lungs;

“Pleas–”

Voldemort turned on his heels in response to Draco’s hysteric cry for help and with a single slash of his wand threw Draco to the back wall of the room, the hawthorn wand clattering to the floor and leaving him disarmed.

“Do as I bid you.”

 

The Malfoys practically ran across the room to their son. Death Eaters begun dispersing; some to leave the room, a few to gain a better vantage point. Lucius picked his son’s wand from the floor and tucked it in his robes as if he was laying flowers on a grave.

“Such a little boy…” came Bellatrix’s twisted chirping, following her Master: “My lord…”

“ _Bella_ ”, he rumbled in a warning tone. Bellatrix hung her head and bowed low.

Draco scrambled his limbs back under his control, half-way up to a sitting position, and was arrested by the sight of his parents crouched only just above him. Propped on his elbows, he watched the incessant flow of tears from his mother’s eyes and the pained, ill expression on his father’s face. Bellatrix crossed the distance in slow steps with an unreadable, hard expression on her face. His voice came out, too much like his father’s a moment before, hoarse and quiet and pleading:

“Aunt Bella…”

His eyes were wide with undiluted fear and his voice reeked of either some pretence of hope or simple disbelief.

“Well, well, Draco… too bad. Too, too, too bad.”

Her wand rose and pointed straight at the quivering figure on the floor.

 

“ _MOMMYYYYY!!!!!!_ ”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry… my beautiful baby, my darling, Draco…I’m so sorry…”

Draco’s screams tore the air in ribbons, and his infantile, mounting sobs destroyed the ears of many and the hearts of some.

“I can’t!! _I can’t!!!_ ”

Narcissa cradled Draco’s head in her lap, calling for his name and assuring him that “ _Mommy’s here…_ ” while Lucius searched for his son’s palm to enclose in his own hands. The Death Eaters around them closed in on the family, and Narcissa and Lucius raised their wands –


End file.
